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What is Thrive?

Thrive is a decentralized marketplace for advertising that seeks to disrupt the monopoly currently held by Google’s ad words. They are developing their own blockchain that is specifically tailored towards advertising needs. The Thrive platform will allow anyone to order advertising placements and reviews and allows users to earn rewards simply by watching advertisements.

The platform will work to give advertisers and publishers a clearer method of engaging with and evaluating their consumers, while also making consumers aware of the personal data that they are providing to the advertisers and rewarding them for doing so. With improved communication between the two needs on both sides should be met more readily.

The timeline provided on the platform website states that the concept for Thrive was put into motion in January of 2017. Development continued throughout the year and by next January they began their private token sale round. They plan to start beta testing by September of 2018 with a mass launch set for November.

How Does Thrive Work?

According to Thrive they interviews advertisers and publishers and received a response that 80% of them would like to join Thrive’s marketplace. Through the ad marketplace advertisers and publishers will be able to buy and sell advertising a lower cost, and the database AI will handle fraud control and profiling with the data that is provided.

Users receive a reward when they share data about themselves while surfing the internet, reviewers are rewarded for helping to check and ensure the quality of each website, and the websites get rewarded for responding to the reviews and making improvements. By creating a system in which every participant receives some sort of reward for their actions the ecosystem is maintained, and the marketplace is naturally regulated.

Features and Benefits of Thrive

Customers benefits by getting rewarded for sharing data about themselves while using the internet, something that they usually give away for free. Furthermore, they can also get paid for providing reviews for websites within the ecosystem. Ideally this will help users to gain control of their presence on the internet and not allow themselves to continue to be exploited by sites that just share their data.

Advertisers and publishers will be able to take advantage of the lowest fees ever offered, as well as a new payment method that will be faster than ever before in the industry. The platform also allows them to receive and respond directly to user feedback by making improvements to their advertising, as well as better identify their target markets and reach out to them.

As a result of the transparency of the platform the accuracy of marketing will increase as will the overall efficiency of the process, with neither side being taken advantage of. They essentially eliminate the middle man, which leads to lower fees as well. There will also be increased security against fraud, as the platform can help to secure your reputation.

The Thrive Token Sale

A private sale is currently being conducted and is set to conclude on February 14th, 2018. After it concludes, the public token sale is set to kick off on February 15th and run through April 5th, 2018. There are some geographic restrictions with the sale that prevents those in the United States or China from participating. The tokens will be referred to as THRT and will be distributed as ERC20. A total of 200,000,000 tokens will be created, 53% of which will be put up for sale. The unsold tokens will be burned.

The fundraising goal for the token sale is set at $30.6 million or 25,000,000 Euros. According the website the private sale has generated $3.86 million so far. 1 THRT is equivalent to $0.31 or 0.25 Euro. The minimum contribution will be 250 Euro, with a maximum contribution to be announced later. The sale will accept ETH, BTC, and LTC for payment.

On the site there are breakdowns offered for both the distribution of tokens and the budget allocation. 53% of the tokens are being made available for the crowdsale. 27% are going into a reserve, 17% going to the team, 2% for bounties, and 1% to the advisors and partners. Regarding the budget, 57% will go to the team, administrative, and research, 22% will go to marketing, 13% business development, 4% to the legal team, and 4% for contingency.

Who’s Behind Thrive?

The Thrive website provides substantial information regarding the team behind the ICO. The Chief Technology Officer is Cataldo Franzone who is educated at the University of Catania and has served as CTO for several other companies. The Chief Operating Officer is Giuseppe Calabro who is described as an experienced business development executive. He also attented the University of Catania and has worked companies like WEBOOM LTD and JustWith.

The Chief Marketing Officer is Viviana Carcione. She held the same position with WEBOOM and helped found JustWith. Chief Strategy Officer is filled by Giuseppe Scordino who earned an MBA at the University of Rochester and has worked for brands like Bacardi and Dell computers.

The advisory board consists of five people, including Dr. Joseph F. Borg, the Vice President and co-founder of Bitmalta, as well as James Cantania, the CEO at Intelliblock. There is also a finance professor and finance executive. The team has over 30 employees in total, mostly based out of Italy and Switzerland.

Conclusion

User data being shared to advertisers and others has been a growing issue over the past couple of years. Big websites and corporations have been accused of sharing personal data of their users without their explicit knowledge, and therefore they are undercutting the trust of their users and fracturing their relationship. This is one of the areas in which Thrive is appealing, because it allows users to be more aware of the personal data they might be sharing and rewards them for sharing, so at least they are not being outright exploited.

There is a lot of competition in this area which makes breaking into this market and establishing yourself from the rest all the more difficult. Fortunately, advertising is an extremely large market so there may be enough room as it stands right now for Thrive. The team behind Thrive looks experienced and strong and since the concept what thought up they have worked quickly to get to the token sale stage and plan a launch by before the end of the year.

Much is riding on the success of the token sale and it is essential for their projected budget decisions. The thought process behind Thrive seems sound and it will be an ICO we keep an eye on as is enters its fundraising stage.

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Peter Lehmann

Peter is a blockchain investor and cryptocurrency writer at Vkool.com. Since 2014 Peter has advised blockchain startups and ICOs on content marketing, strategy and business development.

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